Further evidence of the 'free' public health care myth arrived in the mail box with a letter from a family doctor listing the fees for his services and the option to purchase an insurance plan for what he calls 'the most common uninsured services'. He is selling at competitive rates no less!
In Ontario you can buy meaningful medical insurance for your beasts but not your babies. Now the private insurance dam has sprung another small leak with a new insurance product covering "medical administration costs". It is great to see the entrepreneurial spirit of this doctor. His spirit should be both welcomed and extended by the government. Ontarians should have the right to purchase medical insurance for meaningful procedures not just doctors' notes.
When defenders of the state-run health monopoly say that Ontarians enjoy the right to public health care, what they really mean is that Ontarians enjoy the right to be on a wait list and the right to be held at needle-point for 'fees'. This sorry fact is being challenged in court by two courageous brain tumour patients who want the freedom to buy private insurance and have alternatives to state-mandated wait lists.
Since 2000 the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) has approved a health care insurance vehicle for administration, quaintly referring to it as a 'block fee'. As a result, Ontarians can purchase insurance that will cover their doctor's notes stating that they are too ill to attend work because they are waiting on a list to get treatment. What they can't buy is insurance that will cover the actual care needed. This is because most medical treatments are covered by OHIP, when and if a service is finally performed.
The doctor selling his own private insurance product lists 23 administrative services for which he charges fees ranging from $11.72 at the low end for telephone prescription renewals to the high end of $150 for the filling out of forms for a physical required for a driver's license. The list includes a category of 'other' which must encompass the $100 fee charged to my wife for all the forms required for her maternity leave - which amounted to photocopying and signing the same form repeatedly. It may also cover things like an $80 booking fee charged to me for the booking of a surgery or the $0.25 per band-aid fee charged to my sister-in-law after her baby received his mandatory immunization shots.
The marketing and price plan are clever giving consumers a choice between the premium family insurance plan at $130 per year covering all 24 categories instead or an individual standard isurance plan of $65 per year which covers 7 categories of uninsured services.
CPSO guidelines require that a physician must inform patients of his or her billing practices and patients must agree to the fee before receiving the uninsured service. However, this implies that patients really have a choice to find another doctor who may charge less or nothing. Good luck with that given the family doctor shortage.
The practice of health insurance isn't new. There is private insurance for eye care, dental care, audiology, physiotherapy and chiropractics, for example. There is no good reason that hip replacements and cancer care can't be equally insured. Government-rationed health care isn't working. Ontarians should not be satisfied waiting on a list to receive life-saving urgent care simply to protect the myth of public health care. Like the rest of the world, Ontarians should be free to spend their after tax dollars on health insurance or health services if they so choose.
